An addiction to pornography was one of the effects of my early childhood sexual abuse. The women in the pictures were fascinating, though I had no clue why they were unclothed. My brother would “show me” what the women did as we looked at the pictures. The natural result was a strong sexual confusion on my part. For years I thought I was a woman.
I now live a heterosexual lifestyle and have been married for three decades. But through these years I have found myself struggling with this addiction. Of course I feel the typical shame and self-loathing after indulging. The more I watch the more I want to do it. As an adult, the people I see in the pornography still elicit in me the same feelings of being needed that I felt as a child.
I have come to understand many things about the roots of my addiction. The primary root is the yearning to feel needed. The abuse scarred me deeply and has manifested itself in me at times as an irrational compulsion for gay porn. This is what is called “acting out” for me. I acted out the early homosexual abuse through porn, compulsive masturbation, and a few gay encounters.
Acting out in any way is destructive emotionally and spiritually, but especially to my marriage and to my work. When I sense a temptation to indulge in porn, I try to remember that this feeling is strong, but irrational. The porn will never satisfy me in the deepest way and it can never heal what hurts the most—my broken heart.
I now live a heterosexual lifestyle and have been married for three decades. But through these years I have found myself struggling with this addiction. Of course I feel the typical shame and self-loathing after indulging. The more I watch the more I want to do it. As an adult, the people I see in the pornography still elicit in me the same feelings of being needed that I felt as a child.
I have come to understand many things about the roots of my addiction. The primary root is the yearning to feel needed. The abuse scarred me deeply and has manifested itself in me at times as an irrational compulsion for gay porn. This is what is called “acting out” for me. I acted out the early homosexual abuse through porn, compulsive masturbation, and a few gay encounters.
Acting out in any way is destructive emotionally and spiritually, but especially to my marriage and to my work. When I sense a temptation to indulge in porn, I try to remember that this feeling is strong, but irrational. The porn will never satisfy me in the deepest way and it can never heal what hurts the most—my broken heart.
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